Yesterday, Google unveiled a beta version of its Chrome OS, and also demonstrated a preliminary version of a notebook computer running the new OS, dubbed the Cr-48. According to Google’s specs, the new machine has some interesting features:

The device has local flash memory storage, but no hard disk. It does have USB ports, although their potential uses at this point are somewhat limited (you can’t, for example, download pictures from a digital camera); some of these kinks will, I’m sure, be ironed out by the time production versions are available, slated for mid-2011. The initial hardware will be manufactured by ASUS and Samsung.

Google is emphasizing that they are aiming to make these devices more secure than the average PC is today. The Chrome OS machines have a facility called Verified Boot, in which the initial loading of the OS is done from read-only memory; all subsequently loaded modules have their cryptographic signatures checked. If necessary, any suspect modules can be replaced from a secure storage facility. Updates to the software will be automatic. User data stored locally is automatically encrypted.

One feature of the new device that has attracted some comment is the absence of a CAPS LOCK key. I have thought, at least since I got my first PC, that having a CAPS LOCK key on a computer keyboard was really stupid — in the unlikely event that I want all upper case, it is much easier to just type the text and tell the editor to capitalize it all — but some people seem to be agitated about this.

Google also demonstrated that the device still would be useful, even if no Internet connection were available.

One of the most common arguments against the idea of a browser-centric operating system for netbooks is that the platform’s usefulness could be significantly undermined in the absence of connectivity. This problem can be partly mitigated by offline Web application support, as Google demonstrated by showing how the offline version of Google Docs works on Chrome OS.

The company also said that they have negotiated some attractive cellular access plans with Verizon, and possibly other carriers.

Google also launched the Chrome Apps Store on Tuesday, with several hundred applications, some free, and some costing $2 or so. (You can look over the Store with another browser, like Firefox, but you have to use Chrome to actually get and install the apps.)

I’ve written before about Google’s natural (self-) interest in promoting Web use, and I think the Chrome OS project is interesting as an example of that, as well as being technically interesting. The added cellular connectivity is certainly a plus for folks that travel a lot. It seems that a key idea is to make a device that is much simpler and easier to maintain than the current notebook PC configuration. It’s hard to predict how well this concept will fare with consumers.

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Oracle has released a new Version 6 Update 23 of its Java software (which it acquired along with Sun Microsystems). This version fixes more than 50 identified bugs, including a number of security fixes. It also incorporates updated time zone information and better support for languages that are written right to left. Further information is in the Release Notes; details of the bugs fixed are on the Bug Fix page.

The new version is available for Windows, Linux, and Solaris (SPARC and Intel) systems, and can be downloaded here; alternatively, the update mechanism included with the software can be used. (Mac users should note that Apple maintains its own versions of Java, and typically takes at least a few weeks to get the latest updates.) As I noted in an earlier post, it is not clear that everyone needs to install Java. However, if you do have it installed, I recommend installing this update as soon as you conveniently can, because of the security fixes.